Background - In August of 1990, Carcass came to Richmond VA while on tour with Death, and had a show booked at the Jade Elephant club. Dave Brockie of GWAR had a side project going on at the time called Dik Suk Jak, and they had a show the same night around the corner at The Metro club. As legend has it, Brockie went over to the Jade Elephant and talked Carcass into coming over to The Metro to play a second set with Dik Suk Jak and the Alter-Natives. That was my first dose of Carcass, will never forget the sight of the frontman rocking out with a hot concubine draped around his leg like a barbarian in a Frazetta painting.

Last night Carcass returned to Richmond for a sold-out show at the recently-opened Broadberry venue. The bill was Carcass, Obituary, Exhumed and Noisem. Since the show was sold out in advance but there was still ticket demand, a plan was hatched to have Carcass play a second 'surprise' show at midnight with different material, as long as 200 tickets could be sold for the late show by 9pm.

The early show went as planned- Noisem, Exhumed and Obituary played promptly and the venue was filled with 400 headbangers new and old, tons of old heads came out that I seldom see, everybody was stoked, it was an excellent, packed show. During their set, Carcass reminisced about the 1990 show, eulogizing the recently-deceased Brockie, and confirmed that they were indeed going to play the second show at midnight.

After the early show the venue sorted out those wise enough to toss out the paltry additional $20 to have Carcass play another set of different tunes to a rabid remaining crowd of only about 150 people, which further dwindled down to maybe 75 by the end of their second 90-minute set, which was absolutely ferocious. Carcass again told the tale of the 1990 shows in Richmond, and proceeding to completely throw down a badass set of their heavy hard-edged grind and death metal. The band looked so into it, big grins and throwing beer cans into the crowd, which was so small that anyone could walk right up to the front to rock out, surely the smallest crowd Carcass has played for since reforming. More banter from Jeff Walker included his statement that he was "pissed as a fart". The band sounded great and totally blasted out more and more bangers into the wee hours. What an insane, intense and memorable show and a righteous continuation of the Carcass tradition of always playing two shows whenever they are in Richmond! The band was just plain awesome.

I also read today that Exhumed and Noisem ended up playing a house show at 3am... not bad for a Thursday night.

Massive respect to Richmond's mastermind show booker Mark O, it's shit like this that makes this town one of the tightest small city underground rock scenes in the USA!